Shadow_Kitty

I'll gladly team up. I just won't trial up.

I never went into heroclix for just that reason, despite getting the free first rush from City of Villains Collector's Edition - or any other trading/miniature game, for that matter.

Random packs is kind of micro rewards on speed. It deliberately hooks into the reward mechanism and hijacks it using anticipation, which enhances and amplifies the reward mechanism. Even if you didn't get what you wanted, the anticipation-amplified reward mechanism pushes you towards spending to buy another one. It dangles the carrot just inches from your face and randomly snatches it away from you.

It is a very powerful combination, and that's exactly why it is used in F2P games and trading miniature/card games in the real world as well.

The objective behind such a scheme is by using the anticipation-amplified reward mechanism to get the user to spend more, by spending less on each individual spending and using the randomness to have him buy another one.

I can't say that it's morally bankrupt. However, I think it is dubious, and I don't want to buy stuff on those conditions. I want to be presented with the products and a price tag straight up. That way I can make an honest appreciation of the product's value without having my brain hijacked by exploitations of its reward mechanisms.

I don't like the idea of walking into a fashion store and buy a Secret Box(TM) in which I can get that top I really want, or a fashion magazine or a member card for a fitness club or a set of lunch coupons which I don't want, completely random.

For me, those other things have zero value, so even I get "something", I'm not interested in them, so it's worth "nothing" to me and hence it's equivalent to no prize at all.

Boo. Hiss.

I really really really really do not like gambling. Please reconsider.

That is a perfect way if you want to piss off the solo players.

A better way that wouldn't piss them off would be to use the existing perfectly viable and already existing "team only" tool in the game: task forces. They already have minimum team requirement and unique reward tables, so you wouldn't have to develop new features to have team-only rewards. When it comes to promote teaming, that is exactly as efficient as the multi-team trials. Possibly even more efficient, since it is easier to start a team of 8 than a team of 24.

As this system already exist, I do not have to spend a lot of time developing a new multi-team feature, but can instead introduce the systems needed to have a slower small-team/solo path to Incarnate-hood outside task forces, and fix other quality of life issues.

That would in my point of view be the best of all possible worlds.

• Teamers will still have the advantage as they have always had thanks to being teamed
• The system itself would be open to everyone, although solo players would be disadvantaged by not being on a team
• The storytelling would be way more efficient
• The game play would be way more friendly to the audience's computers
• You use your coding time more efficient
• And as a bonus, you don't piss off players who, like me, like teams but hate raids. Nor do you piss off solo players. Players that pay your wages.

Just so you know: all the other muhmorpugers out there are basically a single player game with a chat and a "share mission" button attached to it.

There isn't. What people mean by "solo content" is mostly "soloable content that scales for teams just like everything in the game that is not raids or task forces".

But for some reason team Team ignores that. Team Team also ignores the fact that the scalable instanced "solo" missions that the team leader picks and automatically is available for all the other team members, regardless off whether they are eligible for it or not, and that rewards the players for participating and helping other players completing each others' missions regardless of level difference, makes this game's "solo content" several orders of magnitude more team friendly than all of the competition combined.

Cat approves, even if I already have all the clothes I need since I nicked the scarf from that weirdo in the blue phone box.

Nope.

"Muhmorpuger" means that you run out about 200 meters into the dangerous wilderness and kill fifteen sparklebunnies and then return to the guy with the big golden "!" over his head and trade the sparklebunny pelts for a broken wooden sword, so that you can return to the forest to kill fiften old sparklebunnies and then return to the guy with the big golden "!" over his head, so that you can trade the old sparklebunny pelts for a paper jacket so that you can get bitten three times more by the next batch of superior sparklebunnies that you have to kill.

And there are lots of other people killing your sparklebunnies before you even get the chance, stealing your loot so that you have to kill even more sparklebunnies to get the broken sword. Sometimes they also kill you, just because you chose a server marked "PvP" or you did something stupid like turning "PvP" on.

There's no teaming required at all. At best, teaming is a way for the other players not having to go to the guy with the golden "?" above his head to get the quest to kill sparklebunnies. In worst case, teaming is just showing the other players on the map where to kill your sparklebunnies and steal your loot.

No, not you, but others. *no names mentioned*

Each to their own, I guess. If I were to beat stuff up, I would probably be playing BlazBlue or SoulCalibur or something like that.

But as long as you're happy, I won't stop you. I just think that it's a pity that there is an entire feature that, unlike regular missions, does not allow for both our playstyles. And I think it's curious that the "but MMOs are social, therefore big teams" card is played as an advantage of iTrials, when they clearly aren't.

Yes: take a break and chat and be social. Which is one of the greatest advantages of a team according to team Teams, since soloists apparently are introvert types that don't chat.

The problem is that iTrials are hectic. There's always a timer going. Always something that you have to rush to and defeat. Hurryhurryhurry!

Yes, the features are there, but I simply found that the iTrials were the third least social things in the game (soloing and trading being slightly less social). There was no breathing space, no time to be social.

Actually, you're pointing out the need for rewards for raid-only content. There is a slight difference. Teams don't have to be 24 people. 8 people is also a team. And people have been teaming for a long long time, despite the possibility to solo.

Why?

Because most people find teaming fun, social and easy. Not "easy" as in "we win all the time", but as in "it is easy to set up and handle and be part of the team". So they do it. After all, this game is the paragon of teaming in MMOs.

So why is there such a resistance to raids if people find teaming fun, easy and social?

I can only speak my mind, but this is why I don't do iTrials:

I don't think that they are social. You're supposed to run according to the raid leader's instruction and mash buttons on instruction. It's hectic and fast paced, so there's no time for chat, especially since the chat window is not adapted to 24+ people. And as soon as you get somewhere, you are hit by another set of tasks and another set of instructions, so you don't get any time for being social. There are no pauses, no natural breaks. The only time when you can be social is in that dreaded period where the league is assembled, but that time is on the other hand filled with a lot of practical requests.

Being so large, you're a statistical blip in the team. Remove yourself and you remove a few percent of the team's DPS and not much more. Whatever your unique function you have, there are at least three others that do the same. Which means that you're a redundant and replaceable cog in the machine, with some spare cogs. I'm not special, I'm not super, I'm just a faceless soldier on the battlefield. The graphics don't help: you're just drenched in effects, so you're not even visibly cool.

Compare that to the ordinary 8-man task force. It has pauses for being social and chat. I'm more than 12% of the firepower, and I often have that vital function that will cause the task force to fail if you go to sleep. I'm the cat that kills the sappers before the fight even starts. I am a face, a name, a function. I am important. I am super.

Not even the raid-only rewards at the end help. I don't get that social connection in a raid. I don't get that feeling of being important. I'm just yet another nobody that could just as well not be there.

So I'm not there.

Yes, it is solo-friendly.

But all those features that you listed are not only Quality of Life features and/or solo-friendly features, most of them are also also team-friendly features, since they also increases your ability to help the team. They weren't only added for us "solo players" (which, by the way, mostly really aren't solo players - quite a lot like teaming, just not raids) but also for you "team players".

At the same time, the game is the most team-friendly MMORPG out there, thanks to among other things...

• max team size of 8 (industry standard is 4 or 5)
• mostly instanced missions (industry standard is mostly zone missions, which means that there is competition for the mission objectives - very team-hostile if there isn't mission collaboration too)
• mission collaboration - your progress in a mission counts towards your team mates progression if they too have the mission (there isn't a standard here - many games have collaboration in some missions but not in others)
• sidekick and later super sidekick (industry standard is no sidekick whatsoever, screw you if you're at the wrong level)
• active mission selection and tracking (industry standard is "mind your own business")
• rewards to team members even if they don't have the mission (industry standard is a share button that doesn't work more often than not, but besides that, no reward if you don't have the mission)
• enemy group scaling (industry standard is "maybe, but only in instanced dungeons")

...et cetera et cetera.

The conclusion is that although this game is solo-friendly, it is also the most team-friendly game on the market, in sharp contrast to the rest of the industry which is bloody team-hostile except for the raids.

The game wouldn't have been less team-friendly if the iTrials had used the regular team features rather than a new raid feature. However, by excluding "solo players" from content - and not only powers and mission content - by using the raid mechanics, it has become a little less solo-friendly.

I'm one of those. Right now, I only play on designated weekly supergroup event days (Mondays and Thursdays), and I don't feel like logging on more than that.

Thanks for expressing how I feel.

Thing is that the other MMORPGs don't have much team content at all. Most is actually single-play quests with a "share" button added to it. It's not that often that it works, by the way - the other player may not be at the right spot in the quest chain, or have done it already. In either case, the share button doesn't always work.

Unless you hit exactly the sweet spot where the other players are at the same place in the quest chain, the only actual team content are the raids at the end game. And more and more MMORPGs out there are finding that players seem to prefer smaller dungeons rather than huge mega-raids.

In any case, CoH is still the paragon of team content and has been so long before iTrials were added.

If you play any other MMORPG out there, for instance the ten ton gorilla, the ten ton gorilla in space, the little rhesus monkey in tights, the one ton gorilla from Hyboria, or the one ton gorilla with zone events, you will find that City of Heroes is an extremely team-friendly MMORPG.

In all those other games, you have a team system which involves a private team chat, a way to monitor each other's health, a way of seeing each other's position and the option to share the quests from the solo quest system imported from non-MMO RPGs. Content-wise, you don't need the other players. If you're not in sync progress and level-wise, you're mostly hindered by the other players on the team. The only exception is those raid thingys at the end.

In this game, you don't have to share the quests. The team leader just sets which quest is active, and all the players can see all the details about it. You get rewarded no matter if you have the quest or not; you can help completing the quest no matter if it's yours or not (clicking X or killing Y automatically counts); the quests scale to the number of participants...

...and then there's super side-kicking, which guarantees your progression even if you're helping the n00b.

I get the sense that there is a paradigm that an MMORPG is a single player RPG with a team system patched on so that players can participate in raids, and that you simply can't break the paradigm. Not even the devs of the little rhesus monkey in tights seemed to be able to break free of the ten ton gorilla paradigm of a single player RPG quest system with a share button.

I don't know if its stupidity, peer pressure or lack of imagination, but I'm still astonished that other MMORPGs haven't stolen CoHs idea. It's not even stolen to NC Soft's other MMORPGs, so it can't be a patent issue.

Hands down, CoH is the most team friendly MMORPG out there.

With customizable hair.

Both of these will require new mission systems, as there is no current system to end an arc in pvp and no current system to split a task force.

Just writing task forces with a slightly different focus (i.e. common enemy, rather than the end of the world) doesn't require new mission systems.

I do not envy the developer that will have to balance the final pvp mission as well, so that one hero stands a chance to seven villains (or vice versa), and I do not envy the community manager who has to defend "forcing pvp" onto players that stay as far away from pvp as possible.

Option 2 is then slightly more realistic than option 1, but I can't see either of them happening.

After 18 pages of refuting "but if you destroy the world, you will die as well, so it can't happen", what did you expect?

That argument has been used repeatedly in this thread. It's still moot.

If you didn't read the previous counter-argument, here it is in brief:

The problem is not the villain's lack of self-preservation. The problem is the writer's lack of imagination. Every single time there is a co-op, it is to stop the end of the world!

It would be nice, for a change, if another common cause was used. Those books with the sparkly vampires, for instance.

I see at is at decreasing the range of victims. Even if a co-op TF that jumps off with a more villainy starting point, there's still four plus iTrials that don't. I really can't see the heroes as "victims" in that position.

That assumes that heroes suddenly get an allergy to villains that they somehow managed to ignore for the past years of existing heroic co-ops. If a hero player really can't team up with a villain, they have already either not played the co-ops or worked really hard to not be on a team with villains already. I don't expect their position to change overnight, so in that category, the number of affected players should be more or less constant.

And remember that those are pretty few. Most griping villain players going "here we go saving the world AGAIN!" actually go anyway. And they probably have pretty fun doing it, even if they're tired of the backstory.

At worst, there will be a small minority of heroes that never team with villains and that will continue to never will and thus aren't affected anyway, and a large majority of heroes that may go "here we go being villainy for the greater good AGAIN!" - but only after the devs have made something like half a dozen co-ops and iTrials straight using that angle.

At first, it may even be a welcome change even for the heroes.

At least there will be some balance.

I could say "then don't play those", like so many bluesiders have said before in this thread, but that would be just plain evil, so I won't...

...who the Helsinki am I kidding? Then don't play those!